October 24, 2011

Free Stuff

As a freshman on campus, it’s my first opportunity to be completely inundated by free stuff. My entire life, I have loved free stuff – I mean, which kid doesn’t? But until you get to campus, especially, it seems, Case Western’s campus, you don’t really realize how much free stuff you can fit into a tiny dorm room. This Friday, I would have been on campus for two months. And I’ve got SO MUCH STUFF. To date, I have seventeen free t-shirts (which, personally, is an amazing and awe-inspiring collection in itself). I have various Case merchandise – foam fingers, cups, and ID holders. Then there are the fairs – the career fair, the Spartan Spirit Fair, the choices fair. I’ve gotten books, folders, gum, thank you cards, and literally anything else you can imagine. There’s so much free stuff!

But Case Western has one specific event, each week, that really takes the cake in terms of free things. It’s called Thwing Tuesdays. Put on by the University Program Board in our student center, Thwing, these areevents that involve two very important elements. First, there is food. Every stereotypical “starving college student” loves any sort of free food, but UPB brings in some really good vendors to showcase to the Case Western community every Tuesday from noon to 1. For example, we have had Jaipur Junction (a really great Indian restaurant), Melt (an awesome grilled cheese place thatputs anything and everything into a grilled cheese sandwich), Ben and Jerry’s, Qdoba, and more. All sorts of wonderful restaurants. After the food comes the fun!Each week, UPB brings in some sort of childhood event. For example, the event that really draws the biggest crowd is Create a Critter, which is similar to Build a Bear – but it’s free! I made an elephant this year, on the very first Thwing Tuesday of the semester, which I am eternally happy about attending. We’ve also had spin-art t-shirts, crayon makers, coloring books, cookie cutter makers, and, once, we had free Legos, which were pretty awesome! See, when you come to college, maturity levels definitely go way down. Today’s a Tuesday, and at Thwing, we got coloring books and Qdoba. I was so excited about my Disney princess coloring book, but when I texted my mom about it, she seemed a little confused… guess I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to be so excited about princesses!

What surprises me the most about Thwing Tuesdays is that not enough upperclassmen on campus seem to know about it – so I thought I’d share it with you, the upcoming Case students, so that, if you choose to come here, you’ll have that little tidbit of knowledge to take you through the first semester. My schedule generally allows for it, and I know it’ll last for it second semester, since Thwing Tuesdays are officially my favorite free event at Case WesternReserve University and I’ll definitely be scheduling the next seven semesters I have here at CWRU around it!

October 07, 2011

Another Year, Another Experience

Yesterday, I was able to apply my knowledge that I learned in class. Now let us analyze that statement. 1) How many times do you actually get to say this to someone and actually mean it and 2) how many times does this statement proceed taking a test or an exam. For most people, the answer would be “a lot”, but I was able to apply my knowledge on a patient who had just given birth hours ago. I explained to her the many different concepts I learned in my obstetric nursing class about the postpartum mother and how the hormonal changes that were taking place in her body made her experience pain and cramping. I was also able to use what I learned in class to answer the questions of a concerned mother.

That is why I’m here, 2034 miles away from home in Los Angeles, CA. Case has such a unique nursing program that allows students to enter the clinical setting on the first week of class. We get twice as many clinical hours than the average nursing student from the best nursing program in the state of Ohio.

So that was my Wednesday. I was able to give my patient’s baby girl a Hepatitis B shot in the thigh and give her mother the immunization card that her child will have throughout her childhood. Let me tell you, this completely beats sitting in lectures and falling asleep.